No University Degree, No Go?

Posted: Oct 15, 2012 4:44 PM | Last Updated: Aug 1, 2014 10:48 AM

By Octavian Lacatusu

TORONTO – Last week, in a story about the Canadian workforce, the Globe and Mailquoted a Doctor Harvey Weingarten, President and CEO of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), on the matter of truck driving. Weingarten was quoted as saying he had met a Canadian carrier who insisted his drivers have university degrees.

Truck…univ…what?

Surprised, we contacted Dr. Weingarten.

What carrier would he be talking about?

“I don’t remember the guy’s name, it was a while ago, in Calgary,” Weingarten told todaystrucking.com. “It’s not that he won’t hire people without university degrees, his general point was that if he’s getting people with university degrees applying why wouldn’t he take them?”

So as far as we know, there’s still no carrier who wants drivers to have a B.A. along with a CDL.

But now it’s out there. So we asked one of our go-to HR experts, driver-recruitment specialist at Day&Ross Ann Finley, what she thinks of the notion.

“I’ve never heard of this [a degree] being a specific reason to hire a truck driver,” said the former owner-operator. Indeed, higher education reveals very little about an individual’s aptitude for trucking, she adds.

“If someone has a higher education than someone else, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be a good driver, because driving a truck isn’t a job, it’s a lifestyle,” she said.

Regardless of their skill set or even their academic background, Finley says it fully comes down to the candidate’s personality, aptitude, driving ability and dedication to the job.

And a clean CVOR speaks louder than an A in anthropology any day.

Meantime, we’re keeping our eyes open for that mysterious carrier who demands his drivers have BAs or better. Given the current driver shortage, it seems like a recipe for disaster. So we’d like to talk to him before he puts himself out of business, by degrees.